I'm looking for both new and used CD players (the smaller the better) of decent to high quality that have integral volume control that can be controlled via remote.
I know some early Sony CD players had this feature as well as Adcom, both of which are typically on the larger side but I could manage assuming the price to quality ratio works for me.
The Parasound ZCD had appeal to me, although it has since been discontinued after a short run, and that's not encouraging.
The Tivoli Model CD player appears to also have remote volume control but reliability is a concern here.
I'm generally thinking the used market is going to yield the most affordable route, albeit the larger route.
I have a friend who has an older Sony ES single disc player I may try to get from him, but the drawback there is I believe it's variable output can only be adjusted from the front of the unit.
Parasound ZCD all the way! At least that is my personal rec, and granted that I have never even seen a pic of the other models you mention.
I have the ZCD in Silver. This model does not have the rack ears, and it is silver, but otherwise it is identical to the black model! I paid $225, used, from ebay.
I love it, great little player for my needs.
The manual will tell you that the hierarchy for sound quality on the outputs is Optical > Fixed RCA > Variable RCA. I'm not sure that I really buy into that, but I think it should at least be mentioned, especially if you want it for the variable RCA outs. I suppose the measurements might show that, but I'm not sure that my ears are convinced that I hear a big difference at least (maybe subtle).
When I use the variable RCA, I'm typically connecting it straight to a power amp for testing purposes (not critical listening, just functional testing). In my general daily use, I use the optical out to an Emo XDA-1.
I also like that you have 3 options for power on: Power Button, AC detection, 12V trigger.
I will also give you my 2 nitpicks after living with this player for quite a while.
1) It does get pretty warm on the top panel. Not too hot, but I've never owned a CD player that put out this kind of heat. I guess it is due to so many electronics packed into a tight space.
2) When you eject the disc, take it out immediately. If you let it sit there with the disc half hanging out, then after 5-10 seconds it will start trying to pull the disc back in, but it can't. Then, when you do manually pull the disc out of the slot, it will continue to try to grab the disk. It does this until you power it off or you manually feed it a disk to grab in the slot.
I did not realize that the ZCD has already been discontinued. Maybe that will turn up some clearance prices? I can say that I am VERY glad that I bought mine when I did.
EDIT: Odd! I just checked the Parasound web site, and it looks like ZCD is no more. The odd thing, it also looks like they recently discontinued the fancy (ie overpriced) Halo CD1. That thing didn't have much of a life span at all! Guess they decided that it was time to kill the CD player business, likely very low volume sellers.
